I didn’t sleep well a couple nights ago. Hell, I’d be surprised if I slept more than an hour or two. I went to bed before the election was called, all but certain of how it would end up. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb and rested it in its cradle as I laid myself down to rest. I pulled my sheets up to my neck and rolled over, shutting my eyes and hoping that my worst fears weren’t about to come true.

I tossed and turned, unable to find a comfortable position, while my heartbeat pounded rapidly in my ears. Anxiety had taken hold and assured me that I would remain restless long into the night as I fixated on the results of one of the most important elections of my life, at the end of the most divisive campaign I’d ever seen.

I woke up to find that the world had ended. History had repeated itself. America had actually done the unthinkable, and elected a poor facsimile of Adolf Hitler to the highest office in the land. Donald J. Trump, having run on a campaign of zealous bigotry, hatred, blatant lies and fearmongering, had been elected the 45th President of the United States of America.

In that moment, the American Dream as I’ve come to know it had died, murdered at the hands of xenophobic hate that gripped half the nation in its iron claws. Now, it’s nothing more than the words suggest; a dream, the far-flung fantasy of a nation too obsessed with its own visage to recognize the cracks in its façade. Drunk on the idea of American Exceptionalism, America couldn’t tear itself away from the imagined, idealized version of itself in the bathroom mirror to realize the house had collapsed around it.

The candidate of Neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and White supremacy will soon take the White House, and I shudder to think of what will become of the country when he does. Donald Trump’s campaign weaponized White Supremacy and the fear that it may eventually be undermined in succeeded on a grand scale in a way Barry Goldwater couldn’t in a time when we were led to believe that racist attitudes and bigotry were things of the past. It has been the grand lie of the past eight years, that we’re living in a “post-racial” society, as evidenced by our election of Barack Obama. Of course, black people, brown people and Muslim folks knew full well that the idea of a “post-racial” America was a load of nonsense, but the idea persisted anyway, as if beating us over the head with the words would cause us to miss what was right in front of our faces.

Sorry, we’re a little less gullible than that.

Unfortunately, as minorities, we don’t have the power to control the outcome of an election. Influence, yes, but not control. We simply don’t have the numbers. That meant we would need our white allies to step up and side with us against bigotry, and we were let down. Whites, both male and – mind-bogglingly – female, sided overwhelmingly with Trump. The line in the sand had been drawn and showed that, in large numbers, white people were more than willing to look past Trump’s bigotry in favor of the mere possibility of preserving their self-interests. When you’re complicit in supporting someone despite how bigoted they may be, you’re essentially telling minorities that you just don’t care enough about them.

In a time in which racial and tensions are perhaps higher than ever, the majority of White America closed ranks and collectively shook its head, “No”.

This election was a referendum against everything America has been becoming over the past few decades. This election is, without a doubt, White America’s upturned middle finger to minorities nationwide. This is their way of collectively saying either “We’re willing to sacrifice you on the altar of the slim possibility that our lives might improve a bit under a Trump presidency.” or “Fuck the whole lot of you. This country doesn’t want you here.” Be it subtle or overt, the message is clear, White America is more than willing to look past bigotry if it means they have the slightest chance to prosper.

So, to my fellow minorities, be safe out there. There may not be many silver linings around the clouds these days but, as Kendrick Lamar said, We gon’ be alright.

]]>http://www.themindofgame.com/2016/11/10/day-after-the-sky-fell/feed/02933Solidarity With Colin Kaepernickhttp://www.themindofgame.com/2016/08/29/solidarity-colin-kaepernick/
http://www.themindofgame.com/2016/08/29/solidarity-colin-kaepernick/#respondMon, 29 Aug 2016 14:26:05 +0000http://www.themindofgame.com/?p=2926I feel compelled to write something about the…erm…stand Colin Kaepernick took recently by sitting out the national anthem prior to a game. I’ve already shared the image above on social media showing my support for his actions and now I’ll go further and explain why.

If you don’t support what he did, that’s fine, you have that right, but don’t fix your face to say that he didn’t have a right to do it. As Americans, many of us feel compelled to beat our chests about our “freedoms”, and yet, many Americans have lashed out at Kaepernick, as if he wasn’t allowed to sit out the national anthem and not pay reverence to our flag. Is the double standard there not obvious? Are we free or aren’t we?

Some have stated that, since Kaepernick is a multimillionaire, he has a position of privilege that somehow precludes him from making statements about the systemic oppression and continued devaluation of black people in this country. His privilege does not make his protest any less valid or his statements any less true. If anything, his standing as a popular athlete can help bring attention to the very problems that those with less status have been speaking up about but had their voices fall upon deaf ears because they didn’t have the status necessary to bring attention to them.

In the time since Kaepernick’s protest, I’ve seen people burning his jersey, wishing him grievous injury (from a torn ACL to a broken neck) and, of course, hurling vile racial epithets at him. Not only have they completely missed his point, they’ve gone out of their way to prove it.

The irony of all of this is that these are the same people who have shown nothing but the utmost disrespect toward the President and the Executive Office these past eight years.

It annoys me that black people are expected to be seen and not heard. The pressure is even greater on black athletes, like Kaepernick. Black (or bi-racial, in Kaepernick’s case) football players are expected to entertain, to run, to jump, to score touchdowns and earn victories, and they’re supposed to do this while being completely silent. Black people, especially black people of privilege and in the public eye, aren’t allowed to have opinions. We’re not allowed to speak out against injustice. We can’t comment on race relations in this country. We aren’t allowed to be angry. We’re supposed to be silent.

That’s why I stand in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick and will continue to do so as long as his protest continues. Cam Newton recently said in an interview with GQ magazine that we, as a country, are “beyond racism” when in reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Of course, there wasn’t any backlash from those remarks. With his denial of the existence of racism, he was essentially re-enforcing the status quo, the fictional, gussied up version of reality America would rather we believe in, rather than the one that actually exists.

So once again, you can bash Colin Kaepernick for his refusal to honor the flag during the national anthem, but don’t you dare call him un-American. The mark of a true patriot is a person who loves his country while realizing that it isn’t perfect. It is clear, that there is much more work to be done in this country before America can consider calling itself “perfect”. Before you go out of your way to get riled up and angry at Kaepernick for not showing his support for the flag of this country, how about you take a moment to consider the fact that maybe, just maybe, there is some merit to his protest. Until all people of color, not just black people, are no longer marginalized and oppressed, America will never be the ideal the flag Kaepernick refused to honor is meant to symbolize.

Words cannot properly describe how disappointed I am with the series finale of How I Met Your Mother.

No, wait, yes they can.

Never in all my years of television watching have I seen an ending so unbelievably shitty. And before you ask, no, I haven’t seen the Dexter finale but I’m pretty sure this one is worse. This isn’t just bad. No, this is a masterclass in terrible endings. I’m in awe at how mind-numbingly bad the series finale – entitled The Last Forever – was. Even now, a couple days removed from having seen the terrible ending, I’m still at a loss for words to accurately describe how bad this was. This is an ending that transcends medium. It’s not just an awful ending to a television show, it should stand as an example of one of the worst endings to any piece of fiction. Ever.

The history books will look back on this, using it as an example of how not to end…anything. Not just television. Anything. This is, dare I say, The Mother of all bad endings.

Spoiler alert, by the way. In case that wasn’t obvious.

Everything this show was supposed to be about was turned on its head. The Mother of the two children Ted is narrating this story to, who is set up to be the love of Ted’s life, turns out to be little more than a speed bump on Ted’s nine season long journey to find his true love, who turns out to be Robin.

But what angers me most isn’t the disposal of the mother, used to give Ted the children he always wanted and then tossed aside like just another of Ted’s throwaway relationships we’ve seen over the years. No, it’s that the writers had the gall to put Ted and Robin together after spending the better part of nine seasons detailing the many reasons why the two of them couldn’t work, no matter how much they loved each other.

The two of them wanted different things from lives. Ted wanted to settle down and have children and live happily ever after in married bliss. Robin wanted to be a career woman, jet-setting around the world on assignment as a hotshot TV journalist. Oh, and not only did she not want kids, she was incapable of having them altogether.

So they would never work. This was your reasoning across nine seasons as to why they would never work. This is the thick, woolen tapestry of a narrative you’ve spun in order to make this narrative work, no matter how many times Ted and Robin fell in and out of love with one another over the years.

But now, over the span of two episodes, everything changed. The Mother served her purpose in giving Ted the two children he always wanted, and conveniently got sick and died in the span of about five minutes, in order to make way for Ted’s true love.

Oh, and that wedding that they spent not one but two seasons setting up – remember, much of season eight was made up of Barney’s elaborate scheme to propose to Robin – the one that took place over practically all of season nine? The marriage lasted about half an episode. Bravo. What a colossal waste of everyone’s time. Time that could’ve been spent giving us reasons to care about the mother before her untimely, over-in-five minutes-and-then-tossed-aside death.

And the worst part about it? The kids are just okay with it. No, not only are they okay with it, okay with the idea that their mother was little more than a surrogate baby dispenser/consolation prize to Ted in all of this, they seem happy about it. Yes, I understand that their mother has been dead for six years so the grief has lessened somewhat, but the sheer glee they display when Ted basically asks them for permission to go and bang their Aunt Robin is nothing short of sociopathic.

But it’s surprisingly fitting, nonetheless.

After all, we barely knew this “mother” person. Yes, there were brief flashes of the person she was, painting her as the kind of person Ted was meant to be with all along. But that’s all we saw. Flashes. We didn’t get to know her, so the kids’ reaction may as well have been a stand-in for that of the audience. Yeah, I’m supposed to care about the mother, but the show didn’t give me any reason to, so go ahead bro, you might as well go bang Robin like you’ve always wanted.

And we can’t even say that the writers bait-and-switched us all this time. No. The series has always been about how much Ted loves Robin and their many adventures and misadventures in love they’ve had with one another. From the very first episode, when Ted first saw her from across the room, he’s been madly in love with Robin and even when she was to wed Barney and he met his consolation prize of a wife/mother of his children to be, that never faded. But the show kept telling us it wasn’t meant to be, that it would never work.

Oh but it would. It would just require a stand-in to give Ted his children, conveniently get out of the way and time. Because Robin couldn’t keep that fast paced news anchor lifestyle up forever, could she? No. Eventually, she’d settle down, which would give Ted’s children time to grow up into near adulthood so she wouldn’t have to deal with them. Because Robin wanted no part of dealing with kids 24/7. But now that they’ve grown and are mostly self-sufficient, all the obstacles are gone and she and Ted can be together. It’s a win-win!

Except that all of that is amazingly nonsensical. Too many things have to happen in order for this implausible scenario to work. The show’s writers must have thought of this as well. They’d written themselves into a corner with the “Ted and Robin still love each other” plotline but instead of going the logical route and simply skipping all of this, they contrived a convoluted and asinine way for them to be together against all odds.

What boggles my mind is that, at no point did any of the writers look at this and say “This is a bad idea. This needs to be scrapped and we need to go back to the drawing board.” And how could that not have happened? How could anyone look at this terrible schlockfest of an ending and think “Yep, this is good. This is how our show needs to end.” Did they simply not care? Was everyone just so tired of working on the show that they decided to come up with the worst possible ending for the series as their final “fuck you” to the fans who had invested in it? At this point, I’m inclined to believe that. Just look at the past couple episodes. Even Jason Segel seemed to have checked out.

So fuck you too, How I Met Your Mother. Fuck you and that shitty, sociopathic ending of yours. An ending so irredeemably awful that it deserves nothing more than unrestrained and unfiltered contempt. Yes. I was invested. Yes, I’ve noticed that the series took a steep decline in quality over the past few seasons but I was hoping they could at least end on a high note or even a decent one. Yeah, ending with Ted and the Mother meeting on the train tracks and realizing that they were meant to be together under the shelter of the yellow umbrella as the camera pulls away would’ve been cheesy but I’ll take cheesy over apocalyptically bad any day.

What a way to put a cap on a long running pseudo love story. I never would’ve imagined the writers would want to paint their protagonist and his children (and Robin too, to a certain extent) as sociopaths but I guess I just don’t know television.

So ends the story of Ted Mosby, Robin Scherbatsky and the gang, not with a bang, not even with a whimper, but a complete 180 degree turn, smashing into a brick wall and exploding into a million shitty pieces. I have never seen something I actually enjoyed end so badly, and I hope I never will again.

As I watched the utter annihilation of the Denver Broncos that was Super Bowl XLVIII, I was paying only cursory attention to the commercials. Unlike some, I’m not just in it for the ads. So, as I was checking my computer, with my eye away from my television screen, a rendition of America the Beautiful began to play. But the commercial didn’t really get my attention until the lyrics changed. They weren’t being sung in English anymore, and I turned to look at the screen. Then the language switched again. And again. The commercial had succeeded in grabbing my attention. I smiled. What a nice little message of diversity and multiculturalism, I thought.

But as the commercial ended, my smile faded. Not because of what it represents, but how it would be received. I knew that, as I sat there, waiting to get back to watching the Broncos being pummeled into the turf, that people were flocking to social media, perhaps by the thousands, to express their outrage over the audacity of Coca-Cola to feature America the Beautiful being sung in a language other than English.

And boy was I right. After the game, I took a look at Coca-Cola’s Facebook page and what I saw was disgusting. Disgusting, but sadly, not surprising.

As I skimmed over the page, I took a few screenshots for use later. To capture and immortalize the stupidity and nationalistic rhetoric lining Coca-Cola’s Facebook wall. It pained me to read. Person after person saying they’d never buy another Coke product again and how the company should be ashamed of itself. Check out just a few of the posts I saw wrapped up neatly into one image.

Click to Enlarge

And for what? Promoting diversity? For trying to promote a message of acceptance of those from other countries trying to make a go of it in America? For trying to live up to the ideal etched in bronze and mounted inside the pedestal of what’s supposed to be our shining beacon of freedom to the rest of the world, the Statue of Liberty?

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

– Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus

But of all the posts I’ve read on Coca-Cola’s Facebook wall, of all the intolerance and nonsense I read, the following comment was the most distressing to me.

“As an American, I found this ad appaling (sic). I have no problem with legal immigration, but once they live here, they need to assimilate our culture, our laws, our language.”

Perhaps I’m alone in this but I utterly detest the idea that people who come to America have to leave their culture, and customs at the door. That America should be a melting pot, where other cultures are melted down and ultimately assimilated into one American culture. I prefer the popular counter argument to the idea of a melting pot, the salad bowl. In that sense, all of the various cultures that make up America are mixed in together but at the same time, distinct. The various customs and ways of life coalesce into a single core of America, but the ingredients that make it are separate enough to lend their own unique flavor to the country.

You know the sad part of all of this? The people who posted these things probably think they’re being patriotic. I’ve seen quite a few people try to hide their bigotry, xenophobia and intolerance under the blanket of what they believe to be patriotism, which couldn’t be further from the reality. No, that blanket you’re using isn’t patriotism. It’s 100% pure, un-concentrated nationalism. It’s patriotism taken to the extreme, to the point where one ceases to merely love one’s country and starts to hate other nations for not being like the country they protest to love.

For all the talk about how far we’ve come over the years, it’s disheartening to see that old xenophobic attitudes are still kicking around, in many ways as strong as ever. Perhaps people are more reticent about their bigotry in public but the added security of and ease of access to the internet gives the bigots of the world a public and freely accessible forum to vent their frustrations to the world. It’s disappointing to see just how much further we have to go as a country, to live up to ideals born hundreds of years ago.

Though the Super Bowl has come and gone, with the Seattle Seahawks emerging victorious after a decisive win over the Denver Broncos, one incident that took place before the Super Bowl has stuck with me. To get to the Super Bowl, the Seahawks had to take on the San Francisco 49ers and that game came down to the wire, the winner decided by a pass intended for 49ers receiver Michael Crabtree being deflected by Seahawks corner Richard Sherman, effectively ending the game.

Immediately following the Seahawks victory, Richard Sherman was interviewed by reporter Erin Andrews, an interview that would quickly become infamous. Sherman’s crime? He was loud, passionate and animated, towering over the comparatively small and seemingly defenseless Erin Andrews. Rendered practically speechless by Sherman’s bold rant, it seemed as though all she could do was to keep her composure and avoid running away clutching her purse.

That is, if you believe the media’s portrayal of it.

As a result, throughout social media Richard Sherman was called a nigger and a monkey. But that is to be expected. The promise of supposed anonymity combined with the internet’s unique ability to allow anyone’s split second knee-jerk reactions to be broadcast to a wide audience often catches closet racists with their pants down as they’re overcome by impotent rage and reach for their smartphones. But the most unfortunate term to have been used has to be the word “thug”.

According to Gawker Media website Regressing, the word “thug” was used in the fallout from Richard Sherman’s post-game interview over six hundred times.

And how was he a “thug”? Does screaming, not at, but in the presence of a female reporter make him a thug? Does calling out another player make him a thug? Unprofessional, perhaps, arrogant, yes, but not thuggish.

For a moment, let’s go back to the moment in question to try to put the rant into context. Richard Sherman had just made the most important play of his career, tipping the ball away from Michael Crabtree and into the hands of teammate Malcolm Smith, (who would later be voted Super Bowl MVP) to effectively end the game and send the Seattle Seahawks to their second Super Bowl and the first of Sherman’s career. In the next moment, Sherman went over to Crabtree and offered to shake his hand while saying “hell of a game” and Crabtree, also caught up in the moment, shoved Sherman away by his facemask.

With all the adrenaline that had to have been pumping through Richard Sherman’s veins, it’s understandable that he would be fired up and emotional during a post-game interview mere moments preceding the biggest and most important victory of his short career. Yes, it was unprofessional, and yes it could’ve been handled better, but it was not indicative of a thuggish nature, just an impulsive one. Football is a highly charged sport and tensions run high between teams and players, especially considering these are two divisional rivals.

As for me, I’d never paid much attention to Richard Sherman prior to this for a number of reasons, some outside of my control. He’s a player I’ve recognized as excellent at his position but I rarely get to see him play. But with all the recent scrutiny that has befallen him, I’ve come to know more about the man behind the rant and just how far away from a thug he actually is. This is a man who graduated from high school with a 4.1 GPA before moving on to Stanford University, where he later graduated with a 3.7 GPA.

But if you know anything about Richard Sherman, you probably already knew that, right? I certainly did, even before this rant. Coming from where he came from (a little place called Compton) to have done as much good as he has in his short few years in the league, I’d say I’m positively shocked to see such backlash against him but since I have a pretty good idea of how society typically reacts to this sort of thing, I know better. And really, do I need to hammer the point home even further?

What has me positively tickled is that, not even a week removed from Sherman’s now infamous rant, here we have Justin Bieber being arrested for drag racing and being under the influence and public perception of him has been largely skewed toward painting him as a “misguided child” rather than the delinquent he’s turning out to be based on a long string of bad behavior and a series of arrests.

Some argue that these recent behaviors are an attempt by Bieber to create a thug “persona” and distance himself from the bubbly, tweener pop image he’s acquired over the years. And that little distinction makes all the difference. For Bieber, he’s just creating a persona. For Sherman, being a thug isn’t a persona, it’s who he is.

When Republican Congressman Michael Grimm threatened to throw a NY1 reporter over a balcony on camera after being asked a question he didn’t want to answer, where were the allegations en masse of him being a thug? Here we have actual threats of violence and intimidation tactics being used against a reporter for doing his job and I’ve yet to see backlash in the same ballpark as that which befell Richard Sherman for talking loudly immediately after a game. More than a week later, the issue seems to have faded from the public eye.

So, tell me again…who’s the “thug”?

The problem with the use of the word “thug” to describe Richard Sherman isn’t so much that it’s hyperbole of the worst kind. The bigger issue stems from the fact that the word is thrown around far too often, especially in regard to men of color. The stereotype of the angry black man permeates the media’s portrayal of black men and has taken root within societal consciousness.

In this instance, and many more like it, the word “thug” has merely become an acceptable stand-in for the word “nigger”, a word for everyone racist enough to want to call Richard Sherman a nigger but smart (and, yes, cowardly) enough to avoid saying it in the public eye. This isn’t a case of a simply innocuous misuse of a word or a mere Freudian slip of sorts, which saw the world belching a word that didn’t fit the situation. No, this is a sign of a deeper, systemic problem with our view of large, black men the instant their voices rise above some sort of acceptable decibel baseline.

But, at the end of the day, Richard Sherman’s attitude is of little consequence. He and the Seahawks went on to absolutely demolish the Denver Broncos, 43 – 8 to earn their first Super Bowl win in franchise history. He and the Legion of Boom proved too much for the Peyton Manning and the Denver offense to overcome and Sherman sufficiently backed up his talk. Will this be the end of the “thug” comments? I doubt it. In the offseason, the comments will fade but the instant something similar happens again, they’ll pop right back up, and the cycle will start over again.